(07-22-2019 07:13 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: I appreciate the detailed response even if much of it is above my pay grade. Maybe I need Professor Howe to visit this site and respond.
A couple of minor responses.
(1) I find it disingenuous to simply say warming is good. There are a lot of factors at play with global warming and to merely say the downsides to higher temps are massively better growing conditions for crops and a bunch of rich people (and of course poor people in already poor countries) losing beachfront real estate seems way off. For one thing, higher temps lead to extremes (droughts and flooding) so I'm not sure you can say we'll have better growing conditions if temps rise by a degree or two. Ask the midwest farmers what their crops are looking like in 2019.
And it's a lot more than rich people losing beachfront real estate - whole cities (or sections of them) would become inhabitable and those people would have to go somewhere. I'd also like to see what melanoma and skin cancer rates look like 20-30 years from now.
There are good and bad aspects. A warmer earth means that more land further north becomes farmable, particularly if the warming comes closer to the poles, which most of the models seem to project. Growing wheat in places like Siberia and further north in Canada might be nature's way of dealing with global population explosion.
I worry about the oceans, but a three inch rise in sea level is not going to put NewYork under water. I wonder how much of the rise can be abated by diverting some of it into existing land below sea level, like the Qattara Depression and Lake Eyre. Probably not a lot, but more than none. There are projects to do both, and one advantage would be creating rainfall that would make certain desert areas potentially farmable.
Quote:(3) India - I agree with you there. I think that's a lost cause - too many folks and not enough room. And a culture that just doesn't seem to have any idea on how to harness its growth and cultural differences. I think there is hope for China. First off, it's a massive country with much lower population growth now, so it seems like they can handle their population needs more effectively in the future. And secondly, I do get the sense the Chinese people are more concerned with climate issues - maybe because their cities have become so dangerous to live in terms of smog and pollution levels. And it's a simple response but when a movie like The Wandering Earth become a massive hit in China ($700 million gross), you can't tell me the Chinese people don't care about our earth's future. Maybe they have no say in the matter because the rich corporations are going to do whatever they want, but I just see China being more concerned about this issue than India. But it doesn't matter too much if Africa takes over for China in terms of corporate and environmental abuse.
Ah, yes, the class warfare card. It's all the rich people and corporations who are to blame.
India and China both have the same problem--a billion plus people, with out-of-date infrastructure. They and Africa are still trying to feed their people. Environmentalism is a rich person's issue. If you don't have anything to eat, your carbon footprint is not going to be your first concern.
But India and China and the developing world are the biggies. If we can't get them under control, then what we do here is pretty meaningless. Getting meaningful reductions in those places, starting now, would seem to be a major priority. We're probably going to have to bribe our way to those solutions.
Quote:And in general, I find it sad that so many of you keep saying alarmists and scientists are only saying there is a problem but not trying to create any solutions. There are many, many scientists worldwide who are trying to come up with workable solutions to a lot of our planet's problems. Do you feel the same way about cancer researchers (they're just scamming the public for money and not creating any solutions?).
But they aren't coming up with anything. At least, nothing useful. Cancer researchers are coming upon with all sorts of solutions. The treatment I'm currently receiving for mine did not exist ten years ago and was still an experimental treatment at M.D. Anderson five years ago.
And it's not the ones looking for solutions that I think are just scamming for money. It's the ones "studying" what will be the theoretical impact 100 years from now. All right, already, it's a problem. We don't need you parsing the numbers another 10,000 ways to tell us that. If it's that big a problem, then get your ass busy trying to solve it. And give us stuff that works, not stupid meaningless and counterproductive crap.
There is still a big part of me that wonders if this isn't all some kind of money grab. Make the rich folks and corporations the bad guys, create mass hysteria, and then use that as justification for redistribution on a massive scale. The failure to come up with solutions, and the almost neglect of that side of it, makes me wonder just what is the end game. The more we focus on how bad the problem is, and the less we focus on solutions, the greater the possible hysteria.
Quote:One product I would hope is very close to fruition would be a mass acceptance of truly biodegradable water bottles. If we could all be buying cheap water containers in our grocery stores instead of the plastic ozarka bottles (or whatever company) that actually are compostable, then that would go a long way towards helping our oceans and landfills. All of the little steps people do in their carbon footprints eventually add up.
One solution to a lot of degradable plastics issues seems to lie with hemp. The faster we can get the restrictions on producing hemp lifted, the better. And plastic goes way beyond water bottles, although that is more a pollution issue than a climate change issue. Tis is another area where getting India and China and the developing world onboard is a key. Something like 85% of ocean junk is attributable to both and east Asia.
Quote:Merely saying over and over again, what are their solutions seems to be a simple and crass way to get your point across.
No, because here is the point that gets missed. There is a lot we can do with current technology. Instead of playing around with lab experiments, figure out how to solve as much as we can with what we have.
One thing that would help is making greater use of electricity as a prime mover for more applications.
Electric cars are a technology that is still being developed and, like all developing technologies, still has problems. So we need to keep development going, but it's not something to which we can all migrate
en masse. But electric trains are doable now. Europe does them. The difference is that trains can draw power from wires as they go along, instead of having to take their power with them, and that simplifies the equation tremendously. We were on the way to an electric train system here back around the 40s, but changed our minds and went diesel.
Now where to get that electricity? Wind and solar are the chic answers. But like electric cars, they aren't ready yet. Until we come up with better ways to store electricity, they can never be base load sources. Nuclear is ready and doable. A nationwide electric train system, powered by nuclear, would make a huge difference in our carbon footprint.